Posts by martin gorner

censored ?

I wrote a post criticizing this article. Apparently, it has been "moderated out". This was unexpected on The Register.

Basically, I concur with kevin 3 and I disagree with the general tone of this article. The author seems to find the idea of prison violence inflicted on Lindsay Lohan fun and pleasurable. I say the author should seek counsel and treatment.

quality engineering

>Their PC is still an also ran. This is why the

>iPad was released as a variation on the iPod

>rather than a Mac

The iPad was released as a variation of the iPod because it was possible to adapt iPhone apps to the iPad quite easily. If the iPad had been a variation of MacOSX, people would try to install applications not designed for the device and 99% of them would suck. That is bad user experience. That is also the problem Microsoft is facing when they try to sell Windows on tablets claiming that "it works". Yeah, but the competiiton from Cupertino are selling tablets that "really work".

It is funny how people jump to the dark strategy / conspiracy theories, when more often than not, Apple's decisions are based on sound engineering reasons.

Agree with Jobs

I agree with Jobs on this topic. His first and foremost interest is to guarantee a minimum level of quality in the App store. That is what he needs the "control" for. Apparently, he cannot do subjective quality check, like the app submission people rejecting an app "because it is just too lame", but he does focus on objective quality assurance points. The app being a native port using iPhone native controls (widgets and so on) is one of those points. A valid one for me. The iPhone SDK provides great native controls with animation affects. Other run-times are nowhere that advanced and even if they were, they would provide a different kind of user experience which does not good to the unity of a platform. For comparison, try an X app on MacOS. They work, but what a UI nightmare!

EU statement says "physical medium"

The EU statement about e-book VAT clarly states that it applies to "any similar physical medium" (similar to paper books). That rules out e-books which are electronic files and only perhaps applies to ebook reading devices. Written as such, it looks dumb and useless.

virtualization-friendly OS ?

Maybe Microsoft is also developping a virtualization-friendly OS for the Azure cloud? A previous article on El Reg raised the issue of OS bloat in a virtualized anvironment when you have to run 5 identical instances of the same OS in order to get 5 virtual servers out of one box. The article suggested that a virtualization-friendly OS would run just one instance of the OS and five thin sandboxes for the virtual servers. OS vendors have no incentive to develop such a thing because they prefer selling multiple OS licenses. But when the OS vendor itself has to pay for the servers, disks and memory, maybe an optimization by a factor of 2-3 sounds appealing all of a sudden.

nice article but what was that bit on nuclear ?

Everything in this article makes sense, even the proof that nuclear is far cheaper than the alternatives but what is that paragraph full of links that attepts to make us believe that nuclear is risk-free and waste-free ??? And it makes it sound like it was a no brainer and we are all dumb for not knowing it.

Well, yes, Mr. Author, I am certainly very dumb indeed because I did not know until now that nuclear energy could be harnessed without radioactive waste or risk. Thanks for enlighting me.

Alternatives galore

I like the Office Ribbon

The Office Ribbon is a great piece of UI for me. I like using it very much and I welcome its addition to Firefox. This is one area when my PC is superior to my mac which not only stick to traditional menus, but still populates them with useless junk.

The only thing missing in Ribbon is a feature search box that would let you find a function by its name.

"ordonnace pénale"

My comment is not intended to be for or against this law, I just want to explain what an "ordonnace pénale" ("penal order" in english) is.

It is a procedure that already exists in France. It is not being introduced by this law. It allows the prosecutor to notify you by letter of a proposed sentence (monetary, general interest work, compulsory treatment, but not jail time). You can either accept the sentence or reject it and go to court where the prosecutor will again suggest the sentence but a judge will decide.

It is inspired by the "plead guilty" procedure in the US with the notable difference that it is strictly limited to minor offeces. There is no way to handle a murder case through a penal order in France.

This simplified procedure was put in place to save time and it does save a lot of time and money to the juducuary administration indeed.

who cares ?

The iPhone has applications, OS upgrades that work on older phones and application compatibility across the line. Who cares about what the competition is doing. If Android ends up srewed up, I will get an iPhone.

I do not disagree but...

100% in sync with you. Claiming "copyright" on material that is public domain should be punished by law.

On the subject of publishers selling public domain books though, I disagree with you. Putting together a book from public domain sources is work. Maybe only an hour of work but real work nonetheless, espacially if you do it for a collection of several thousand titles. Your claim that is costs nothing is false. That work deserves a salary. Also having a public domain text in a legible, usable edition with a table of contents, nice cover, correctly linked footnotes and so on is useful for the reader.

too critical !

I would definitely want a phone that takes just seconds to charge. You say fast charging battery technology is of mild interest for electronic gadgets. Are you out of your mind ? Imagine a laptop that could recharge during your coffee break. You then pick it up and return working in the park. Or did you ever realize your phone was almost dead just as you were leaving for that super-important meeting with a customer. Topping it up in 10 sec would definitely save the day.

More generally, I dislike your calling scientists "boffins". Why use a derogatory terms for scientist? What is wrong with them? My opinion on the subject is that you were of the kind who would beat up bright kids in school because you had no other (intellectual) way of competing with them.